Appetite for victory: Can we get hungry by September?

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
HOPE CAN come suddenly from the oddest directions. It can also be just as quickly dashed. But quickness to seize upon it can, if nothing else, be a measure of how badly we want it — and need it.Thursday

    Page A4 of Thursday’s paper was topped with this proclamation: “U.S. shows appetite for victory.” I hadn’t encountered such an encouraging headline in quite a while. But my joy was short-lived: It was about an American winning the world title for eating the most hot dogs in a 12-minute period (66), defeating six-time champion Takeru Kobayashi of Japan.
    Take whatever satisfaction and pride from that you can. I’m still hoping the nation develops an appetite for something that it might find harder to choke down.
    Lower on the same page was the subject I was thinking of: President Bush, in speaking to a Fourth of July National Guard gathering, said victory in Iraq “will require more patience, more courage and more sacrifice.”
    The bitter irony of Iraq is that we have far more reason to have confidence in the troops’ courage and willingness to sacrifice than in the public’s patience.
    “However difficult the fight is in Iraq, we must win it,” Mr. Bush said. “We must succeed for our own sake.”
    He’s right. He might not be right about much else, but he’s right about that.
    If you go to NPR.org, you’ll find this headline on an item I heard over my clock radio as I was waking Thursday morning: “Military: Iraq strategy can work, over years.” Below that is a blurb: “Most military strategists say it is a feasible plan, but it could take three to five years to see results.”
    Exactly. And how far off is the September update on the surge? Hmmm. Not nearly far enough.
NPR Defense Correspondent Guy Raz reported the following regarding the surge:
    “(T)here are signs of its working.” But “the lifeblood of the strategy requires two main elements — commodities that commanders don’t really have, which is time, and troop strength.”
    So much for military reality. He then switched to political reality, which is far more dire: “Ultimately, of course, with pressure coming down from Congress and the American public, military commanders in         Iraq know that they… simply may not have those commodities.”
    He expects the Pentagon to try to play down expectations of Gen. David Petraeus’ September report as “make or break,” and it should.
    But we seem to lack the appetite for any such dish as patience. The general’s subtext for the September report is that Congress and amorphous “public opinion” will view it with the following attitude: Are we done? Can we go now? Few seem prepared to conclude: OK, this can work, but it’s going to take a lot more time.
    With multiple presidential candidates already reinforcing the “are we there yet?” mood, there’s just no way that the folks in TV land are going to suddenly adopt patience as their operative mode, and give military commanders the time that they need. And yet that patience, that appetite, is something we must develop.
    Unfortunately, the president keeps telling us this. That would be an odd way to put it in any other historical context, but in 2007, our commander-in-chief is the one guy least likely to persuade the public to do something it doesn’t want to do (which is the definition of leadership).
    Here’s how bad things are: The candidate for 2008 most clearly identified with his determination to provide commanders with the time and troop strength they need to succeed is increasingly dismissed as politically nonviable because of that. In case you’ve been living in a spider hole, I’m referring to John McCain.
    Mind you, pretty much all of the serious Republican candidates say we’ve got to win, we can’t back down, etc. But they have the luxury of engaging the issue no more deeply than the usual Republican national security swagger. Sen. McCain has the problem of being specifically identified with what it will take to succeed, and what not backing down truly means, so all the “smart” analysts say he’s in trouble. And in politics, when they say you’re in trouble, you’re in trouble.
    That’s the big difference between what the military does and what politicians do — the military deals with ultimate reality: Apply force here, don’t apply it there, and here are the results. It’s an elemental equation — kill or be killed; win or lose. There’s no denying such reality. Only on the playground does “Bang! You’re dead!”/“No, I’m not!” work.
    In politics, from the now-smokeless back rooms to the woman on the street, what is said becomes reality, because if the public has no appetite, the military isn’t allowed that critical, real-world element of time.
    New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has written many discouraging things lately about Iraq. So I was encouraged this week to see him state again a simple truth that he had set forth often back when he was more optimistic: “Some things are true even if George Bush believes them.” And in this case, “it is still in our national interest to try to create a model of decent, progressive, pluralistic politics in the heart of the Arab world.”
    The very mess that we have looked upon in Baghdad and the surrounding country is our preview of what real failure will look like. Only two things will turn that “mess” into success — time and troop strength.
    But the only way our troops will receive those two elements — as essential to victory as bullets and training — is if America works up the appetite before September. That’s a huge if, but it’s the only hope we, and Iraq, have.

Bushwva

12 thoughts on “Appetite for victory: Can we get hungry by September?”

  2. Phillip

    I agree with much of what you say about the American public’s impatience. It was this very impatience which prevented a thorough debate over the wisdom of the Iraq invasion, the very impatience which the Bush Administration took advantage of to conflate the events of 9/11 with Saddam’s regime. Brad, the “results now” impatience of which you speak cuts both ways.
    But beyond this, I think you need to acknowledge that what “the public has no appetite” for is fruitless waste of young American lives. Darn tootin. On this issue certainly, the majority of Americans are impatient, but in the sense that they no longer wish to sit back and allow this government spend American lives with such insouciance in the face of the will of the people.

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  3. Brad Warthen

    Phillip, there’s only one way to make sure American lives are wasted — by leaving Iraq in its current condition. If we do that, we will have wasted more than 3,000.

    People who keep going on about "this government" should change their focus. We don’t make life-or-death decisions about war, or about the fates of other nations, based upon how we feel about a current administration. That’s transitory. The fate of Iraq is forever. Whether those lives spent thus far are wasted or not — and that depends on what we do NOW, not on what people one doesn’t like politically did in 2003 — is also forever. Their deaths can’t be undone. But we could complete the task they died for.

    Don’t take too much comfort from what the "majority of Americans" think or feel at a given moment, either. Talk about transitory. They WERE all for the war. Was the majority right then? Will the majority agree with you a year from now? If so, then you have nothing to worry about, because majorities win elections, and therefore control over policy.

    On this other post someone mentioned the famous quote from Ibsen, "The majority is always wrong" (or, "The majority is never right!"). Well, Ibsen was being a bit hyperbolic with the "always." But the rest of his statement is at least worth considering. In any case, majorities are very often wrong.

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  4. Mike Cakora

    Senators Pete Domenici, George Voinovich, John Warner and Dick Lugar have impeccable timing; civilian deaths are down in Baghdad and throughout Iraq.
    Note that al Qaeda #2 Zawahiri is defensive about events in Iraq. In his 4th of July video:

    He begins by talking about Iraq, and that remains the main subject although there are passing references to other fields of battle. His theme on Iraq is the need for unity. Reading between the lines, you can tell that Muslims, including relatively radical Muslims, are distancing themselves from al Qaeda in Iraq, or, as Zawahiri calls it, the Islamic State of Iraq. He criticizes clerics who say there is no duty to carry out jihad in Iraq. He contrasts al Qaeda in Iraq favorably with Hamas, and complains that while Hamas receives near-universal support, al Qaeda in Iraq suffers from “a storm of media campaigns, allegations and claims … whipped up in their face.”
    In part, as many commentators have noted, Zawahiri’s plea for unity in Iraq reflects the abandonment of al Qaeda by most Sunnis there, and the fact that many Sunnis have joined with the U.S. and the Iraqi government in fighting al Qaeda. But the defensiveness Zawahiri betrays goes well beyond that schism. He plainly is concerned about how things are going in Iraq, and is anxious to generate support for his organization’s efforts there.

    Here’s a mainstream press account.
    What’s at work is time, a change in tactics, and the luck of having a vicious enemy.
    We screwed up by pacifying an area, then moving out, leaving law and order to the poorly trained locals. This allowed insurgents to move in or other bad actors to take over an assume control. Those days are over, with the surge we’ve changed our tactics, and the timing seems to be working out in our favor: the Iraqis are learning the hard way just how brutal al Qaeda is.
    Not that this is being covered much in the mainstream media. They seem to be too busy reporting non-existent incidents that seem to emphasize civil war, not insurgent atrocities. (At least they’re starting to write about Iran’s direct support to Iraqi insurgents.)
    Operation “Arrowhead Ripper,” the Battle for Baqubah, is about over and most of the big-time journalists have moved out. What’s it like on the streets of Baqubah?

    The big news on the streets today is that the people of Baqubah are generally ecstatic, although many hold in reserve a serious concern that we will abandon them again. For many Iraqis, we have morphed from being invaders to occupiers to members of a tribe. I call it the “al Ameriki tribe,” or “tribe America.”
    I’ve seen this kind of progression in Mosul, out in Anbar and other places, and when I ask our military leaders if they have sensed any shift, many have said, yes, they too sense that Iraqis view us differently. In the context of sectarian and tribal strife, we are the tribe that people can — more or less and with giant caveats — rely on.
    Most Iraqis I talk with acknowledge that if it was ever about the oil, it’s not now. Not mostly anyway. It clearly would have been cheaper just to buy the oil or invade somewhere easier that has more. Similarly, most Iraqis seem now to realize that we really don’t want to stay here, and that many of us can’t wait to get back home. They realize that we are not resolved to stay, but are impatient to drive down to Kuwait and sail away. And when they consider the Americans who actually deal with Iraqis every day, the Iraqis can no longer deny that we really do want them to succeed. But we want them to succeed without us. We want to see their streets are clean and safe, their grass is green, and their birds are singing. We want to see that on television. Not in person. We don’t want to be here. We tell them that every day. It finally has settled in that we are telling the truth.

    Did you read the 11th paragraph, about the horrific atrocity?
    After so much time and bloodshed, it’s dawning on the Iraqis that we are telling the truth, that we’re there to make Iraq a success. I guess that’s one big reason that it would be a shame to leave now.
    Heck, the whole area is a mess, with Lebanon likely to ignite real soon. One senator who consistently makes sense, Joe Lieberman, is nutty enough to urge Congress to do something about Iran. What a hoot! That country has waged war against us since 1979 and we’ve done nothing about it. Imagine the congressional undies that would go into a bunch if our forces did a hot pursuit into Iran. Iran knows this.
    We just need more folks with determination, like this one.

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  5. Herb Brasher

    On July 4th, I sat down and typed out some thoughts on nation building with the military in general. I wasn’t sure I wanted to post them here, and I’m still not sure they really are on topic, but I hate not to put it out there. Obviously I have my doubts about our ability to achieve what we aim for, though I tend to agree that we can’t just pull out of Iraq right now. But maybe one or the other person might be interested in my ramblings and a link;
    It may be beneficial for those who are interested to get a realistic look at the effects of combat on soldiers, I’d suggest the text of an interview with my brother-in-law, a psychologist out in Oregon.
    Here is a telling part of this interview, where he compares our military situation with that of a Kenyan tribe:

    We wear our identities on the inside, mostly. But there, their body is tattooed to give information about who you are and what you’ve done. And it’s not a bad thing and it’s not a good thing; it’s just a factual thing.
    The benefit of that — and I don’t think we should do that for our troops — is that you don’t have to hide anything that you’ve been through. There’s no secrets.
    These people would say (and I heard it more than once) is “The one thing we don’t understand about Americans is how you can kill people you don’t know. When we kill people, we do it for personal reasons.”
    They don’t understand killing for policy reasons, killing is always for personal reasons.
    That’s the things we don’t understand about the people. We don’t understand their traditions; we don’t understand the people; we don’t know how their elders interact.
    I don’t know how you change a society just by force if you don’t know the underlying [mores] — and not just know it, but really appreciate it and understand the benefits and the consequences.
    Part of the reason I went to Kenya is to give me a glimmer into that family [in Vietnam] that I believe died. It helped me prize who they were as people.

    No, we don’t understand the people. Not in Africa, and I fear also not in the Middle East. Therefore I have a lot of questions about nation-building with the military. In fact, I have a lot of questions about our ability at nation-building at all, and it starts at our level of education and training processes. We simply aren’t prepared for this job. Europeans are better trained for it, partly by fact that they have had to live in close proximity with other cultures, and at least learn their languages. I fear that we have too little background for this job.
    But perhaps I am too pessimistic about the current state of training of our military personnel? If so, someone can correct me.

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  6. Phillip

    Brad: it’s the easy use of a phrase like “make life-or-death decisions…about the fates of other nations” that would be most stunning to any Founding Father that could hear it. If it is possible in the early 21st century to even conceive that someday there could be an end to the American experiment, that is because our nation is evolving from one which seeks to uphold certain ideals within its borders as a shining example to the world, into one which expends tremendous capital in lives, money, and effort to shape the affairs of the world according to its own national interest.
    This change of national purpose relates to Mike’s comment and specifically his quote from Michael Yon’s post: “most Iraqis seem now to realize that we really don’t want to stay here, and that many of us can’t wait to get back home…We don’t want to be here.” From the point-of-view of the individual soldier (which he is taking here), Yon is certainly right. But from the American policy standpoint that is a complete fantasy. No matter who wins the election from either party (well, outside of Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich), you can be sure that America will maintain military bases in Iraq for many years to come, regardless of how this immediate conflict plays out in the near future and regardless of any “troop withdrawals” announced in the months ahead.
    Also, Mike: it’s not quite correct to say that “we’ve done nothing about” a hostile Iran since 1979. We unburdened them of concern about their biggest foe (Saddam) and strengthened their hand immeasurably in the past few years. Any rallying of American willpower in the direction of action versus Iran cannot come from this discredited one but rather, is going to have to come from one (of either party) that engages in straight talk rather than sloganeering and accusations of national disloyalty. It could happen.

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  7. Brad Warthen

    Phillip, as always I appreciate your thoughtful comments.
    At this point allow me to point out that we evolved from a nation that “seeks to uphold certain ideals within its borders as a shining example to the world,” into one that tries to do that AND “expends tremendous capital in lives, money, and effort to shape the affairs of the world according to its own national interest” AND its ideals, over 60 years ago.
    The option that the Founders knew — that of a relatively weak nation that had to, as a matter of survival, avoid entanglement with such superpowers as Britain, France and Spain, and could use the Atlantic Ocean to some advantage in doing so — is an impossibility today. The ways that nations interact today, and the relative influence of this nation among nations, is vastly different.
    The question today is, how do we live in accord with values the Founders would have cherished at a time when we are far and away the most powerful nation, economically and militarily, in the world? Doing so requires decisions that they could not have imagined. But if they lived today, this is the situation they would be dealing with.
    And once again, we can only make decisions now for 2007 and later. We can no more replay 2003 than we can 1787. In other words, there’s zero point in talking about what the Founders would have done or would not have done in 2003. If we want to apply their values, we should ask ourselves what they would do at this time, in this situation.
    None of the men we think of as Founding Fathers were thinking of having an independent nation in 1766 (although John Adams’ cousin Samuel might have been, but he was a radical). They adapted to the world as they found it, reacting to circumstances in accord with their ideals. They thought new thoughts.

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  8. Mike Cakora

    Phillip –
    What the founders intended and said during the formative years of our nation differs considerably from what they did. From the get go we had a pretty active foreign policy. The following is an excerpt from Robert Kagan’s review of Michael B. Oren’s book Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present:
    In the perilous early years of the republic, the Muslim Barbary powers preyed on American shipping and captured, tortured and enslaved hundreds of innocent men and women. When John Adams and Thomas Jefferson implored the pasha of Tripoli to stop, Oren recounts, the pasha’s emissary insisted that the Koran made it the “right and duty” of Muslims “to make war upon” whichever infidels “they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners.” George Washington raged, “Would to Heaven we had a navy to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into non-existence.” And Congress did create a navy in the 1790s primarily to crush the Barbary powers and protect American traders and missionaries. President Jefferson — so often mislabeled as an idealist, pacifist and isolationist — eagerly launched the war and ordered the permanent stationing of U.S. naval forces thousands of miles from the nation’s shores.
    How the US crushed the Barbary pirates is a great story and did let the world know that America had arrived.
    As for your remarks about Iran, I quite agree that we’ve not done much to help ourselves in dealing with them. The question has finally become “Do we want an Iran with nukes?” To make the question more interesting, let’s add that “The man in charge of hoodwinking the Western powers about Iran’s now 18-year-old secret nuclear program believes the apocalypse will happen in his own lifetime.” He’ll be 51 in October. While they continue to develop their nukes, they’ll continue to stir the area up through their proxy, Hezbollah, a sure-fire winner so far. Too bad most of our foreign policy experts don’t think like this guy.

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  9. Mike Cakora

    Phillip –
    I am re-posting because Brad activated the HTML thnigy that allows me to include links. Smokin’!
    What the founders intended and said during the formative years of our nation differs considerably from what they did. From the get go we had a pretty active foreign policy. The following is an excerpt from Robert Kagan’s review of Michael B. Oren’s book Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present:

    In the perilous early years of the republic, the Muslim Barbary powers preyed on American shipping and captured, tortured and enslaved hundreds of innocent men and women. When John Adams and Thomas Jefferson implored the pasha of Tripoli to stop, Oren recounts, the pasha’s emissary insisted that the Koran made it the “right and duty” of Muslims “to make war upon” whichever infidels “they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners.” George Washington raged, “Would to Heaven we had a navy to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into non-existence.” And Congress did create a navy in the 1790s primarily to crush the Barbary powers and protect American traders and missionaries. President Jefferson — so often mislabeled as an idealist, pacifist and isolationist — eagerly launched the war and ordered the permanent stationing of U.S. naval forces thousands of miles from the nation’s shores.

    How the US crushed the Barbary pirates is a great story and did let the world know that America had arrived.
    As for your remarks about Iran, I quite agree that we’ve not done much to help ourselves in dealing with them. The question has finally become “Do we want an Iran with nukes?” To make the question more interesting, let’s add that “The man in charge of hoodwinking the Western powers about Iran’s now 18-year-old secret nuclear program believes the apocalypse will happen in his own lifetime.” He’ll be 51 in October. While they continue to develop their nukes, they’ll continue to stir the area up through their proxy, Hezbollah, a sure-fire winner so far. Too bad most of our foreign policy experts don’t think like this guy.

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  10. bud

    But we seem to lack the appetite for any such dish as patience. The general’s subtext for the September report is that Congress and amorphous “public opinion” will view it with the following attitude: Are we done? Can we go now? Few seem prepared to conclude: OK, this can work, but it’s going to take a lot more time.
    -Brad
    Actually most Americans now understand this cannot work regardless of how much time. The only real debate now is how fast do we get out.

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